Industry news in brief

The latest Digital Health News industry roundup features a new Smart Inbox being rolled out by eConsult to support GPs, investment for Mobilise to support its network of unpaid carers and Scan.com helping to offer a proactive approach for women aged 40+ in the fight against breast cancer. 

Isle of Wight NHS Trust selects Cinos for telephony and unified communications

A new partnership between the Isle of Wight NHS Trust and systems integrator Cinos has been announced, with the latter managing the trust’s new telephony and unified communications (UC) solution.

Users of the new solution will be able to make and receive calls from any location using a single collaboration application. Additional calling services are also part of the cloud UC solution.

The new partnership will see the replacement of the trust’s existing UC telephony service with an update that will be suitably flexible and robust to enable new working and service delivery practices. Cinos’ Cisco Powered sovereign UC telephony service will support the trust in adopting a hybrid cloud strategy, and deliver a secure and reliable service.

The service is set to be used by the trust’s 3,900 employees once it is implemented in Q4 23/24. In line with the NHS’ wider adoption strategy, it will seamlessly integrate with Microsoft Teams.

Jake Gully, digital operations manager at the Isle of Wight NHS Trust, said: “With the increasing need to support our staff in adopting hybrid working practices and the ability to work from anywhere, we recognised the importance of introducing a new telephony and UC solution for the wider trust. Simplifying the management of our telephony technology will also help to free up the digital team to spend more time on priorities such as core infrastructure and the user experience.

“Alongside our hybrid approach to telephony, we recognised that we needed help with building resilience into our infrastructure. With Cinos’ expertise in this area and sector, we look forward to working together on the project and fully embedding the new solution as part of our ongoing service.”

The trust expects to receive recurrent cost reductions of around £360k every year, as a result of the new solution.

eConsult Health rolls out Smart Inbox

eConsult Health has deployed its Smart Inbox to Primary Care eConsult to help GPs with the increasing patient demands they are experiencing.

The Smart Inbox provides GP practices with a customisable and collaborative way to view, manage and respond to patient needs from anywhere and at scale. It is interoperable with the clinical EPR so eConsults are automatically matched to the patient and saved to their record as structured data.

The tool helps GPs to identify which patients need to be responded to first, thanks to a number of filters which help ensure patients are prioritised by clinical need. It can also help speed up the triage system by using signposting tools to flag any potential issues a GP may want to consider when making a decision about when to see a patient.

Smart Inbox also supports practice teams to work together on admin and clinical tasks, such as long-term condition management and appointment booking, with options for team assignments and tagging.

Via the solution, patients can be sent one-way SMS or email messages, which are saved to the clinical record ensuring transparency between teams and a seamless workflow.

Murray Ellender, practising GP and CEO at eConsult said: “The traditional 8am phone call lottery to get an appointment often leaves patients unable to get an appointment when they need one, based on the order they sit within the phone-line queue.

“Submitting an eConsult online – or for those who need support using digital services, via the receptionist over the phone – ensures that GPs can respond to requests and direct patients to the right route of care, based solely on acuity and need. This gives patients a faster response rate and a quicker route to care, whilst helping GPs to streamline their workflow with one single view of everything, in one place.”

Scan.com expands access to mammograms to under 40s

Diagnostic imaging platform Scan.com has announced the launch of private mammogram screening scans, available for patients from the age of 40.

Currently, in the UK mammograms are available to women aged over 50, every three years. The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has recently recommended biennial mammograms from the age of 40, to help prevent avoidable breast cancer deaths.

In a bid to bridge this critical healthcare gap, Scan.com is enabling a proactive approach to women’s health and helping empower women with early detection options.

Dr Lizzie Tuckey, managing director of Scan.com, said: “By offering annual mammograms from age 40, we aim to empower women with proactive choices in their healthcare, potentially contributing to better health outcomes. We want to follow the science, and make early detection more accessible to as many women as we can.”

Mobilise secures investment for digitised carer support

Digital start-up Mobilise has completed its Seed investment round, which will enable it to expand and enhance the digital support it provides to unpaid carers.

Mobilise is commissioned by local authorities and NHS ICBs and reaches out to unpaid carers to offer access to support from the start-up’s 60,000+ community of people, world-class content and events, and one-to-one coaching. Through its support, unpaid carers are able to continue their caring role and to thrive.

Mobilise CEO and co-founder, James Townsend, said: “The sector supporting unpaid carers is facing a challenging environment. This new investment provides an opportunity to innovate for carers – finding new, more accessible ways to reach more carers and provide them with the support that enables them to thrive.

“With millions of us caring for a friend, family member or neighbour, that support needs to be scalable, whilst also being effective and affordable for local authority budgets.

“More and more local authorities are looking for ways to harness digital technologies to reach their carers more effectively. That’s why the digital carer support we offer at Mobilise has attracted these impact investors.”

SAS uses AI and analytics to accelerate delivery of novel medicines

SAS is helping to revolutionise the use of clinical trial data with its cloud-based software and technologies, so that new medicines can be delivered to patients faster than ever before.

The leader in AI and analytics has been selected by AstraZeneca to help increase efficiency and drive automation in the delivery of statistical analyses for clinical and post-approval submissions to regulatory authorities.

SAS will deliver analytics and AI to support the redesign of clinical and patient data flow, as well as manage changing trial designs, enable data re-use and help accelerate reporting and submission timelines.

In addition, the company will also deliver increased capacity, automation, interoperability and flexibility to bring in and analyse diverse and novel patient data sources, including wearables, sensors and precision medicine, as part of the submissions process.

Christopher J Miller, VP Biometrics at AstraZeneca, said: “This partnership with SAS supports the transformation of how we use clinical data to support our patient-centric approach and focus on getting medicines to patients faster than ever before. It will also allow us to introduce new ways of working and embrace new technologies and trial models to accelerate our portfolio”.

The analysis and reporting phases of clinical trials will be supported by SAS Life Science Analytics Framework and SAS Viya, a scalable and powerful cloud-based platform which enables swift decision-making. It can help to reduce IT costs and drive faster time to market, and has the potential to provide significant productivity gains through this.

Bryan Harris, SAS executive vice president and chief technology officer, said: “This is exciting because we have solidified a great foundation between our companies, but we also recognise we are just scratching the surface. We pay attention to technology and the advancements in AI, and we thrive on thinking through how our technology blended with AstraZeneca’s expertise and insight can create new medical solutions for their customers.”

Kinsetsu secured contracts worth more than £1m in 2023

Belfast-based software company Kinsetsu has secured new contract wins valued at over £1m this year, including those within the healthcare sector and for NHS hospitals.

The company provides sensor-based and automation tech solutions for critical service environments. Its ktrack software, for example, simplifies the connection and management of assets via a network of sensors that provide automated insights and status awareness of equipment, people, inventory and fleet.

Joanna O’Doherty, CEO, said: “Jackie (Crooks, co-founder) and I are immensely proud to be female founders working in tech and in defence – neither of which is a common trait, creating jobs in our hometown, and making a real difference in all the sectors we serve.”

Alastair Moore, from Par Equity, one of the investors, said: “The company’s proprietary software delivers a return on investment of over 400% for its customer base, bringing full transparency to their asset tracking on a global basis. We’re thrilled to support the business on its scaling journey.”